Scott Jay Eckersley made lots of high-profile headlines in the Show Me State for suing Matt Blunt after he was fired from the former governor’s administration and when he ran for Congress against U.S. Rep. Billy Long.

Now living in Utah, Eckersley’s name has appeared in very different headlines — as a criminal defendant. Authorities charged him in June with multiple felonies for allegedly removing rival tourism brochures from the lobby of a resort facility near Salt Lake City and replacing them with his own.

Eckersley was charged with four counts of felony commercial terrorism, according to the charging documents.

On Monday, he pleaded no contest to reduced charges in the case. In Utah, a no contest plea often results in a conviction just as pleading guilty would. Generally, people who plead no contest are admitting there is enough evidence to convict.

Under the terms of the deal Eckersley accepted, the charges will be dismissed if he pays restitution, completes anger management classes and stays out of trouble for 18 months.

His lawyer David Brickey told the Associated Press the deal is a good outcome.

The Deseret News newspaper reported that over the past year, Eckersley went to the Zermatt Resort & Spa in Midway, Utah four times and "totally cleaned out" a competitor's display of free tourism brochures, according to Wasatch County Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Winterton.

The Deseret News reported the prosecutor in the case said additional information obtained after Eckersley was arrested showed he owns a condo at Zermatt and believed the brochures had been placed in the lobby without authorization from the homeowners association.

The prosecutor also said there are three HOAs at Zermatt and one of them had authorized the placement of the brochures Eckersley threw away, according to the Deseret News.

Before the alleged crimes, Eckersley’s most recent Springfield headlines documented his high-profile, unsuccessful and controversial race for Congress against Billy Long in 2010.

He had tried to tie Long to rumors of disreputable conduct and was roundly criticized for those efforts.

In 2007 and 2009, Eckersley was in the news for a high-profile clash with then-Gov. Blunt, getting fired and announcing himself as a whistleblower against smear tactics used by the governor's staffers. He adopted the role as crusader for government transparency. He'd been working on Blunt's staff for less than a year when he got fired.

He alleged it was because he advised the staff that under the Sunshine Law, certain emails had to be retained.

The governor's office told media that Eckersley never gave such advice and alleged Eckersley was fired for being late and doing private legal work on state time.

His bosses then released emails from Eckersley's work account (and his personal account, too, he claims) to support those claims, as well as other emails that stirred speculation about aspects of Eckersley's personal life.

Eckersley took the governor to court, battling for more than two years to clear his name. The case was settled before it went to trial, and Eckersley received a $500,000 settlement in 2009.